Let's write!

Today is a non-fiction challenge, because writing non-fiction takes the same skills as writing fiction does: you not only need to be informative and instructive, but also engaging and entertaining.

Your challenge today is to write a bit about something you love. Not a person, but a thing or a subject, for example, your favorite childhood toy, the class you took that you enjoyed the most, somewhere you traveled that you think about when you want to relax and be happy. You could talk about the one thing you like to collect. Or you could talk about a gift someone gave you that you thought was really special. The possibilities are endless.

Focus on conveying to the reader your love of your topic and why you feel that way. It's not enough to say, "I love this thing"; you should be trying to reveal the wonders of the thing to the reader so that they love it, too.

Today's challenge is figurative language, but not in the way you'd expect.

Think of an example of figurative language, such as a simile ("They fought like cats and dogs."), personification ("My heart leapt when I saw it."), hyperbole ("I have a million things to do today."), or an idiom ("A rolling stone gathers no moss.") -- basically anything that conveys a meaning without directly saying it. After all, the first example is saying that they were arguing and bickering fiercely without saying it directly, and we know that the people being described weren't actually cats and dogs.

Now, write a paragraph or two about the literal meaning of your chosen phrase. For example, for the simile, describe an actual fight between cats and dogs. Or, for the personification, describe someone's heart actually leaping. (It'd probably be very painful, and possibly lethal.)

Basically, the idea is to learn and understand what figurative language is by looking at the exact opposite.

Today's challenge is a non-fiction challenge. We tend to think that "writing" means writing a novel or other fiction, but writing non-fiction uses the same skills. Successful non-fiction is not only informative and clear, but also engaging and entertaining.

For your ten minutes today, first, select a subject area that you are very familiar with -- it might be a favorite hobby of yours, or it might be your job, or it might be some subject that you're very interested in and have studied a lot. Now, select a particular focused topic within that subject. Write a few paragraphs explaining that topic to the reader, with a slant toward showing why it's done the way it is.

Remember that you want to keep the reader engaged in your topic just as much as you'd want to keep them engaged in your novel, so use the same skills you use in your fiction writing to bring the topic to life. You might create a character and show them doing the topic, or you might relate an anecdote about someone doing it incorrectly. Or you might relate the historical event that started the topic in the first place.

As an example, if I were writing a book about how to draw blood (the word for this is "phlebotomy", and the person who takes a blood sample at the doctor's office is a "phlebotomist"; no, I have no knowledge about this topic, it's just an example), I might write about the importance of injecting the needle cleanly and hitting the vein well by relating a true story in which my sister had a phlebotomist miss the vein and what they did to try to hit it. I'm not going to write it here, but my sister said it was very painful and left a big bruise.

Wow, it's been a week since the last challenge. Sorry!

Today's challenge: Write a paragraph in which a character gets injured. It doesn't have to be a serious injury - even a paper cut is fine - and you don't have to describe the injury or how it happened, but describe the character's reaction to the injury, such as wincing, going "yipe!", jerking the hand back, and sucking on the cut.

Don't include any other characters in scene, to avoid the temptation of turning the scene into their coming over to help or comfort the injured person.

Oh, I missed Wednesday, so there isn't much time for a challenge before tomorrow. So, today's challenge is

fast/quick

You can write about whatever that inspires, or, to change it up a bit, type as fast as you can for ten minutes, without stopping, about anything that comes to mind.